This Is The Thread Where We Praise And Canonize Paul McCartney's "Ram"

HERE WE GO!

Go ahead and buy "Ram". It can't be that expensive, and you'll probably like it. It has the most extensive Beach Boys homage of his solo work, and some good examples of that sort of linear song structure at which he excels (where it's just a progression of bits rather than verse-chorus-verse). Yes, there's some goofy and even embarassing bits on it, but anyone buying a Macca record knows to expect that. It's a totally unpretentious and, at times, charming album.

Nice haiku, Begs2Differ!

"Fluff, sure, but darn catchy fluff!" - Roger Catlin, Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, 1996.

"Brimming with melodies and intriguing ideas!" - William Ruhlmann, The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995.

"Most of the songs are so lightweight they float away even as Paulie layers them down with caprices!" - Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide, 1981.

"There are some nice moments...It's like watching someone juggle five guitars!" - Playboy, 9-71.

"wailing sentimentality!" - Billboard, 1971.

"I don't see how someone can play it and take in all that stuff and say 'I don't like it!" - Paul McCartney

?!

Jody say it ain't so! It's a decent record. I don't LOVE it or anything, but it's ok. I got a vinyl copy for free. "Too Many People" is a great song.

'Heart of the Country' is a nice jazzy thing that if it had been on the White Album and had some input from the other beatles would have been 10x better.

Paul's 'wigging out' moments like around 3'20 of 'Too Many People' are fucking deadly.

Haha. Yuppers.

I think I said this on another thread once, but I can only listen to Paul in moderation. I like many of his songs on the White Album, but if you listen to them all in a row, you'd be dead by Blackbird > Rocky Racoon.

Too Many People
3 Legs
Ram On
Dear Boy
Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey
Smile Away
Heart of the Country
Monkberry Moon Delight
Eat at Home
Long Haired Lady
Ram On (Reprise)
The Back Seat of My Car

*SNICKER*

I tried listening once. It wasn't very good.

Me no understand.

"Get Back" = Great
"Eat at Home" = Stinks?

Me no understand.

"Lady Madonna" = Classic
"Monkberry Moon Delight" = "The nadir in the decomposition of the sixties?"

Me no understand.

Has 'Monkberry Moon Delight' ever been sampled in a hip-hop track? 'Cause it damn well should be.

this record is great, my favorite Macca solo work

Absolutely.

Surely a great album, although he has done several better ones after he broke up Wings again.

Lately I've been wanting to add Big Barn Bed (from Red Rose Speedway) to Ram...it's got the weird catchy pot-smoking Ram vibe so much. I wonder if it was recorded at the same time?

Ah, it was. I thought I remembered a snippet of it on Ram.

i really like "ram".

the album with the bonus song "oh woman oh why" is the one to get, simply cos that song's a really funky stones-y dirge.

Perhaps some will find this interesting, perhaps not...

...but I'm rerecording "Ram" all by myself, track by track. Have a listen!

The Ram Project

Can't listen right now, but nice idea. I haven't ever heard Ram, i should probably track down the original before checking out your version anyway. Oh, and i've read that book, Tim, it's really good.

Man knew how to uke

McCartney / Ram / Wild Life / Red Rose Speedway is my favorite stretch of Paul, Ram definitely the strongest song-by-song but I adore all four. In fact, if someone told me I could never listen to the Beatles again but could keep this four-album run, I'd be totally okay with that.

I was with you till the second sentence. It feels a bit sad to me that it's his first four I love most, but I can't really deny it.

for me it's Ram, McCartney II and Tug Of War. I'd be more likely to listen to any of these than any Beatles album save perhaps Rubber Soul these days - not that I don't like the Beatles, but those have passed the test of time.

funny that n one really bangs on about Band On The Run like they used to. Is it just cos it's played-out?

I don't know what happened there either. On my first run through the Wings catalogue I was crazy about Band on the Run, and then one day it just faded.

For a while, a couple years back (actually in a conscious effort to rescue the album, ha) I made it the soundtrack to evenings dancing stupidly around the room with my infant daughter. If the pleasure of those evenings stuck to the music as I intended, I might like it again now.

"No Words," "Mamunia," "Bluebird" -- ew.

band on the run is just kinda boring

happy birthday, Paul!

I have to admit that in all my time of listening to McCartney, I couldn't tell you what anything past Let me Roll It sounds like, despite enjoying almost everything up to that point... My attention just drifts

Funny that Let Me Roll It has significantly more plays on Spotify than Mrs Vandebilt, which I assume is the more famous song

HO
HEY HO

I like every song on BOTR, *love* the sound of it (very much a continuation of the Ram->RRS arc), but would allow that the obvious silliness of the lyrics probably hurts it, as with RRS. Ram has a lot of silliness, too, but it has a consistent mood/tone, this distinctive mix of late psychedelia and down-home country flavor, not to mention some of his most interesting writing... it's always felt simultaneously very of-a-piece and very sonically generous.

BOTR has bigger hits, doesn't overstay its welcome, and absolutely does some very "Paul" things very well. But maybe its prior reputation was buoyed a bit by the appearance of a "concept," to listeners/critics eager for something that felt more directly like Sgt. Pepper's or Abbey Road?

Let Me Roll It probably got a streaming boost from Licorice Pizza, though maybe not a huge one. I've never heard Mrs. Vandebilt apart from listening to the album...

BOTR has bigger hits, doesn't overstay its welcome, and absolutely does some very "Paul" things very well. But maybe its prior reputation was buoyed a bit by the appearance of a "concept," to listeners/critics eager for something that felt more directly like Sgt. Pepper's or Abbey Road?

Yup. Always with early McCartney appraisal is knocking him for being an idiot when we know he can "do" concepts and things. Early rock critics were an earnest bunch.

Hmm.. I'm listening to the second half of BOTR and it is flimsy compare to the opening five tracks

I love Ram as much as any Beatles album.

I really fell in love with it over the pandemic. Found an unopened promo copy in a stack of stuff and began playing for the kids when we would get out of the house for a bit and go to the park / drive around aimlessly. They weren't so into the beatles (yet), but couldn't get enough of Ram. We still pull it out from time to time -- I have a decent LP of it as well -- and we just bask in it. It's such a blast!

HO
HEY HO

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 18 June 2025 15:27 (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Wait... is this reprised from something on Ram, or is it my imagination?

Ram is so much a staple of stuff that got played around us as kids that my sister will "quote" lines from it at each other: "Butter pie?" "The butter wouldn't melt so I put it in the pie / Alright?"

Hmm.. I'm listening to the second half of BOTR and it is flimsy compare to the opening five tracks

― DLC Soundsystem (dog latin),

I agree but "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five" though. Our local AOR station played it well into the '90s.

Another thing about Ram that I really love is that it feels like its own world. I don't know if I have those same feelings about any other Paul project other than Pepper.

Was just coming to defend 1985, as good as anything on side 1

"silly love songs" > every song on band on the run, by a long way

I agree but "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five" though. Our local AOR station played it well into the '90s.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 18 June 2025 15:48 (fifty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hadn't heard it before!

HO, HEY HO shows up again during that fade out of Picasso's Last Word. They throw a bit of Jet in there too.

Listening to Picasso as I just was, the string arrangements that pop up in some sections are very Electric Light Orchestra.

Silly Love Songs and Let Em In are fantastic.

Sadly a version of Let Em In has been used prominently as part fo a long running advertising campaign in the UK, which tarnishes it slightly. But I've always said I'd like it played as my funeral song

I've always said I'd like it played as my funeral song

What! Awesome!

I think my Band on the Run ploy worked. I got all excited a moment ago just looking at the tracklist

my plan has always been to follow Paul into the '80s and '90s as the years pass and i grow to be the same age he was when he made those albums. i don't want to feel the pressure of listening to all of his material from that era and deciding if i like it right now. there's no rush

Xp Yes. And as the slouching defeat of the pipes and drums outro brings people to horrible tears, I will sit bolt upright in my coffin during the surprise fake-out, wink at the congregation, shriek an ungodly shriek, then lay back down forever

In all seriousness, Let Em In was playing during the assessment for my blood donation today and that was a difficult-to-concentrate-on moment

late to this party but will add that Paul seems a big let me roll it fan himself, his 9th most performed song according to setlist fm (and he did indeed play it when i saw him)

Another thing about Ram that I really love is that it feels like its own world. I don't know if I have those same feelings about any other Paul project other than Pepper.

― Blood On The Knobs, Wednesday, 18 June 2025 15:07 (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I have the big deluxe "Ram" box, and it's non-disc extras like notebooks, sketches, flick-books and whatever else, are totally charming and lovely. As you say, it's its own world.

Yeah for sure

"Hope of Deliverance" is a gold-plated classic to me.

In all seriousness, Let Em In was playing during the assessment for my blood donation today and that was a difficult-to-concentrate-on moment

currently obsessed with the instrumental outtake (?) "sunshine sometime", what a warm peaceful blanket of a tune

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHii_TnJzB8

wow that's a delight

thinking of paul stoned at home grooving to this

kind of proto-mac demarco

very very very nice

Funny that Let Me Roll It has significantly more plays on Spotify than Mrs Vandebilt, which I assume is the more famous song

Mrs Vandebilt is a famous song? where and how?

^this

I didn't say it was a famous song?

One thing "Let Me Roll It" has going for it is that it was in dialogue with Lennon's "How Do You Sleep?"

Also he's doing a Lennon impersonation and it's a far better song than Mrs Vandebilt.

"Mrs Vandebilt" is a model of production and playing. The bass tracka lone.

I didn't realize it was spelled without an "r" until today.

Oh!

Ey-oh!

I love Mrs Vandebilt for a lot of reasons, not least of which is the switcheroo from “what’s the use of worrying” (reassuring!) to “what’s the use of A-NY-THIIIIING” (dark and hilarious!)

The Oh! Eh-oh! bit alone feels semi-iconic

Hate it. Reminds me of one of the Bee Gees' worst 60s singles, "I-O-I-O".

... or whatever it was called.

fwiw as someone with v lite knowledge of macca solo I have heard of "Let Me Roll It" but not "Mrs Vanderbilt".